BharatGen, India's first government-backed multimodal Sovereign AI flagship initiative, secured over Rs 900 crore in funding by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). The quest for a sovereign AI model from India is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's vision for an Atmanirbhar Bharat as laid out in his recent speech from the Red Fort on Independence Day.
The formal announcement on IndiaAI Mission's support to BharatGen was made by Union Minister of Electronics & IT, Ashwini Vaishnaw, at a Press Conference that was held at Hotel "The Ashok", New Delhi.
BharatGen, with more than Rs 900 cr, is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the funding under IndiaAI Mission 2025. This represents the single largest share sanctioned under the mission, underscoring BharatGen's central role in shaping India's artificial intelligence landscape.
BharatGen is led by Rishi Bal, Executive Vice President, and Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan of IIT Bombay, Principal Investigator, who together drive the initiative's vision, execution, and research excellence. Their combined leadership brings cutting-edge academic rigour and enterprise-scale implementation to India's AI ecosystem.
In July 2025, BharatGen unveiled Param-1, a bilingual Large Language Model (LLM) with 2.9 billion parameters, pretrained on 5 trillion tokens in English and Hindi. Building on this foundation, BharatGen is now advancing multilingual and multimodal AI systems across all 22 scheduled Indian languages with the aim of ensuring equitable access to AI for every citizen, regardless of region or language. This initiative is pivoted in a consortium led by IIT Bombay with partners at IIT Madras, IIIT Hyderabad, IIT Kanpur, IIT Hyderabad, IIT Mandi, IIM Indore, IIIT Delhi and IIT Kharagpur.
Reflecting on BharatGen's genesis, Prof Abhay Karandikar, Secretary, Department of Science & Technology, DST, Govt of India, said that the entire BharatGen team is getting well-deserved support from the India AI Mission for scaling their technology. According to Prof Karandikar, it was truly inspiring to witness the remarkable scale and speed of the progress that the BharatGen team has achieved. He highlighted how the Department of Science & Technology was proud to have been a part of the revolutionary journey for sovereign LLM and expressed his confidence in the 'whole of government' approach under PM Modi's leadership.
Elaborating on the support from IndiaAI Mission to BharatGen, Mr Krishnan, Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, MeiTY, said that BharatGen was taking on the crucial responsibility of developing a sovereign GenAI stack for our nation. He also appreciated that the completely government-funded mission to build a robust Gen AI ecosystem for India should work to make a mark globally as India's Sovereign AI.
Prof. Ganesh Ramakrishnan of IIT Bombay, the Principal Investigator of BharatGen has stated, "The allocation of Rs 900 crore will enable BharatGen to advance its foundational models, strengthen India's digital AI infrastructure, foster enterprise adoption and developer enablement through our Sovereign AI stack, and ensure inclusive access across the country's diverse linguistic and cultural spectrum. We are extremely grateful to the India AI Mission, MeitY and the Department of Science and Technology for helping set up the national sovereign AI ecosystem through BharatGen"
Commenting on the development, Rishi Bal, Executive Vice President stated, "This landmark allocation by MeitY signals India's resolve to build sovereign AI at scale. With BharatGen, we are laying the foundations of an AI ecosystem that reflects the diversity of our nation while advancing India's leadership in the global technology landscape."
With the largest commitment under the IndiaAI Mission, BharatGen is poised to anchor the country's ambition of becoming a global leader in responsible, inclusive, and sovereign artificial intelligence.
BharatGen is a pioneering initiative by the BharatGen Consortium, envisioned as a comprehensive suite of Generative AI technologies designed to serve India's diverse socio-cultural, linguistic, and industrial needs. Anchored under the Technology Innovation Hub (TIH), IIT Bombay, and supported by the National Mission on Interdisciplinary Cyber-Physical Systems (NM-ICPS), Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, BharatGen is the nation's first government-funded Multimodal Large Language Model (LLM) project. The initiative is developing inclusive and efficient AI across 22 Indian languages, integrating text, speech, and images to create robust AI solutions built for India's realities.
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